Season 1, Episode 4

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Letter to the archdiocese of Huesca regarding a vacant bishopric.

Today’s Document

• Subject: Another letter from Joan to an eccesliastical official about a vacancy.
• Date: December 28, 1387
• Day of the Week: Friday
• Language: Latin
• Archival Reference Number: ACA CR R1675 f20r
• Link to PARES
• Place: Girona
• Sender: Joan, Duke of Girona
• Recipient: Unsure, the ‘capitulum’ of Huesca?

Historical Thinking Notes

• Sourcing: written by a secular authority, the Duke of Girona, soon to become king; advocating for a particular person to become the bishop

• Contextualization: Ecclesiastical and secular authority in the Crown of Aragon; need to know a bit more about the document to tie it to other contextual information

• Corroboration: Perhaps the surrounding documents might help to clue me in on this one, but the document above it seems to be a different topic, as it is addressed to the Governor of Mallorca.

• Close-Reading: I will need a lot more time to figure out the Latin transcription in order to do a close reading of this letter; line 5 has a form of ‘rogare’ followed by ‘interventum’ so maybe someone (Joan?) has requested an intervention in some affair

What is this document doing?

• This document reflects the involvement of secular authorities in ecclesiastical administration.
• The familly connection between Nicholao Çorica and his father R. Çorica illustrates the importance of network connections for attaining ecclesiastical positions.

Questions

• The basics - who is the recipient? What are the correct expanded abbreviations in the first four words?
• Was this not addressed to a particular person because this is a minor post and Joan doesn’t know the names of the people in charge of it?
• Who were R. Çorica and Nicholau Çorica?
• Did Joan weigh in on virtually all of the high-up ecclesiastical vacancies or was this drawing his attention because of a request from R. Çorica to advocate for his son? Or was there some other motivation?
• After I can get answers to more of the basics, then of course more questions will emerge regarding the content of the letter and its place in the larger context of Joan’s involvement with ecclesiastical administration.

Additional Notes

In this episode, I shared some information about an excellent source that’s helping me on this project, the Itinerary of Joan written by Daniel Girona i Llagostera in 1923. The Catalan Renaixença began in the early nineteenth century and by the time Girona i Llagostera arrived on the scene, he could benefit from a lot of previous scholarship. Girona i Llagostera decided to track the location of the kings of the Crown of Aragon by assembling an example of a document from each day of their reign, and in some cases during their time before ascending to the throne. Girona i Llagostera’s Itinerary for Joan made it so that I could be confident that I would be able to do a document for each day, at least for Joan. It is important to observe that no one completed itineraries for any of the royal women.

AI Usage

I relied quite a lot on help from Chat GPT for today’s document for both translation and transcription. However, I confirmed translations in Whitaker’s Words and treated Chat GPT’s suggestions with caution, as indicated in the transcript of my chat.

Bibliography

• Bisson, Thomas N. Medieval Crown of Aragon: A Short History. Clarendon Press, 1986.

• Carrasco i Gómez, Genís. “Daniel Girona i Llagostera.” Galeria de Metges Catalans. Accessed December 26, 2025.

• Girona y Llagostera, Daniel. “Itinerari de l’Infant En Joan, Fill Del Rei En Pere III. 1350-1387.” III Congreso de Historia de La Corona de Aragón (Valencia), Hijo de F. Vives Mora, 1923, 169–592. Available on Google Books, accessed December 26, 2025.

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